Eto – African food

Eto is a kind of food that people ate in West Africa. You cooked yams until they were soft, and then mashed them. Then you added eggs and palm oil. This made a rich, satisfying food that people loved to eat. People ate it when they were sick, or if they had no teeth left to chew food. People gave gifts of eto to the gods, because the gods really liked to eat eto.

When farmers picked the first ripe yams every year, the priestesses would use those yams to make some eto. Nobody was supposed to eat the new yams until the eto was done and the yams were blessed.

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Karen Carr is Associate Professor Emerita, Department of History, Portland State University. She holds a doctorate in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan. Follow her on Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter, or buy her book, Vandals to Visigoths.